


the doctor lies

by portions_forfox



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Coda, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:39:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy Pond is the girl who waited, and for the life of her she cannot stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the doctor lies

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the torrent of sad Amy/Eleven shippers' fic surrounding [the final scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BKpQSiL2HM) in "The God Complex."

"Amy Williams," he'd said. "It's time to stop waiting."

A good thing to remember: the Doctor lies.

 

 

 

 

In the future, words will blur. In the future she will forget them. In the future what Amy will remember is the way he smelled of outer-space and almonds as she held him close to her; the scratch of his tweed jacket against her cheek; the warm rush of his breath as he let out a choked sigh; the weight of his head as it fell against her shoulder, burrowing into her hair; the beating of his two hearts, strong, steady. In the future she will remember wondering how long those hearts would go on beating, how many more nights before Lake Silencio. She will remember pulling him tighter then, and for some reason she will recall his hand, just his hand, curling against the nape of her neck, grasping at air, at something that wasn't there.

More words. Words that have faded now, like gray seeping into old wedding photos. In the future she will remember holding him. Touching him. Not letting go. Letting go.

 

 

 

 

Amy sometimes stares out her bedroom window and up towards the sky, but it's not the sky she's looking at, not really. She knows how many stars are shining, how many planets are turning, how many trillions of lives are being led somewhere out there in the universe; sometimes the sky is a small thing, a bore. She and Rory will lay out under the stars with an ever-expanding circle of family and friends, and Rory will bump his shoulder against hers and say, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

 

And Amy's throat will close, and she'll whisper, "It used to be."

Enough, for Rory, was family, and love, and a cottage in Leadworth and a lot of friends gathered around a table at nightfall. And Amy. For Rory, that was more than enough -- it was, in fact, everything he'd ever wanted.  

Amy was different, always had been. Sometimes she wondered if she was really so different, or if it only felt that way because the Doctor had changed her irrevocably from the age of seven on. But before then she'd been a mad little thing, an adventurer, a wanderer, an explorer. Curious. Wandering into the woods and getting up at night to investigate suspicious thumping noises. Getting into trouble. Dreaming first of outer space and then of big cities with big lights. 

Now there are no more cities, no more lights. Not for her. 

 

 

 

 

On the day he left them, Amy ended up in her room--their room--gazing out the window.  And anyone could tell what she was doing.  He'd said it would stop, but here she was.  Waiting.

"Amy," Rory said gently as dusk traced its silvery finger across the windowpanes, "it's been hours. Come to dinner. We could go to the park, even. Or to Marcus' place."

"I don't want to go to Marcus' place," Amy mumbled.  She could not begin to fathom ever possibly going to Marcus' place.

"Amy," Rory said again, his hands resting against her shoulders; it felt nice, momentarily, to have him there--good, solid, reliable Rory.  "We'll see him again."

Amy whirled around, fire in her eyes.  "Yes, Rory, when he bloody well dies!"

Rory was taken aback, and Amy immediately felt sorry for snapping at him.

"I'm sorry," she amended a bit tetchily as she turned back around to resume her stare.  "It's just ... it's been a long day." A long week. A long month. A long year. There she was, already using sensible units of time.  Maybe readjusting wouldn't be so hard after all.

Amy didn't sleep well that night. She couldn't possibly. The image of herself, the younger Amelia Pond, was stirring around in the back of her mind. After a while, it became not an image but a reminiscence. She no longer looked on from a distance as Amelia Pond waited--she joined in.  Physically, she waited at age twenty-two in the master bedroom she shared with her husband who was downstairs sleeping.  But in her mind, she was seven years old again, watching and waiting for her raggedy Doctor.  She drifted in between the two Amys on a raft in her mind, feeling the rock of the waves against her skull, twisting, falling.

The next day Amy tore herself from the window.  She couldn't wait forever, she said.

She has this way of proving herself wrong.

 

 

 

 

Years later, when she was tidying up the master bedroom or cracking open the windows in the summertime, she'd let her eyes linger by where they had so long ago, when she was young and he was coming back.  It takes her so long to notice.  She can't believe she's let it slip past her all these years.  She is dusting one day for the first time in years (against her will, but when visits from mothers-in-law are involved, it's unavoidable), and while grumpily shoving the feather duster into the window crevice, she leans closer and notices something there--

_Doctor I'm waiting._

It was carved into the white window-pane by long, sharpened fingernails, her very own.  She doesn't remember doing it, but now she smiles. She puts down the duster for a moment, and suddenly the smile is gone and she's nothing but angry and hurt and there's something that stings harder in the fact that she is sad, she's just really, really sad. In the least poetic sense of the word.  She slumps against the bookshelf, eyes closed, brows furrowed.  She can almost feel his lips against her forehead.

 

 

 

 

After that first day, when Amy stayed up all through the night at the windowsill, she sees him again.  "He always comes back," she'd insisted once before, and she was right.  He always came back for Amy. For mad, impossible, glorious Amy Pond.

Amy Williams was a different story.

 

 

 

 

"Amy Williams," he'd said. "It's time to stop waiting." The wait is over but the Doctor lies. Amy Pond is the girl who waited, and for the life of her she cannot stop.  

She likes to stare out windows, watching, waiting.  Rory's no fool.  Forty years and eleven grandchildren later, he says, "You're still waiting for him," and it's not a question.  "You always will be."

Amy's eyes don't leave the sky.  "Yes," she whispers softly, after a moment's hesitation.  "I suppose that's true.  Always have, always will."

"I'm not enough," says Rory, and she thinks back to the night he'd been on top of the world, nudged her with his shoulder, pointed to his Earth-home-sky, loved with every pulse his heart could muster and she'd told him  _Not enough_.  

Amy turns around to look at him.  "Rory," she says.  "You know that I love you more than anything. I would give the world for you. I would wait thirty-six years, I would break time for you."  She is telling the truth.  She smiles at him, so fondly.  

"I just can't tell, though," Rory goes on, his forehead creasing; there are wrinkles there now where there weren't before.  "What you've been waiting for."  Now he meets her gaze steadily, says, "Tell me that you're only waiting for the--for the excitement, for that ... that rush I know you love so much, and that's why your life feels a little empty.  Tell me you just miss that part of him, not...him."

"Rory," Amy says, moving away from the windowsill and crawling into bed beside him, kissing the top of his head.  "Of course.  I miss his friendship, his fireworks."  She holds his hands firmly in his, looks at him dead-on.  "You know it's only ever been you."

 

 

 

 

"Amy Williams," he'd said.  "It's time to stop waiting."

The Doctor lies.  So does Amy.


End file.
